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Tensions were high during Monday evening’s PG&E informational session where dozens of residents gathered inside the Pleasanton Senior Center to voice their frustrations over the years of unplanned power outages.
Power outages have been a hot-button issue around town for quite some time, with many people saying they have experienced multiple outages every month — particularly during the hot summer months.
The Pleasanton City Council previously discussed these outages during an October 2024 council meeting where Jake Zigelman, the vice president of the Bay Area region at PG&E, explained some of the reasons behind the outages and what the company was doing to address the issues in Pleasanton.
Zigelman was also present at Monday’s event and said, in addition to infrastructure and maintenance issues that he brought up last year, one of the main reasons residents have been seeing more power outages, particularly over the last three to four years, is the installation of Enhance Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS).
PG&E installed these safety settings on powerlines in and near high fire risk areas to help prevent wildfires — if a hazard is detected on a powerline, the settings shut off the power quickly in order to prevent ignitions that may cause wildfires.
But Zigelman said what has happened in Pleasanton is that certain residents have been caught up in some of those outages, even if they are not located in that high fire risk area.
Zigelman noted that overall though, when looking at the total metrics for Pleasanton, outage minutes have decreased from last year to this year.
According to one of the informational displays at the event, in just one of the power grids in the Vineyard area, the number of outages has reduced from 24 last year to 16 this year.
While some residents at the meeting appreciated the numbers being displayed, others were left skeptical about the work PG&E is doing to address these outages.
Karen Hallett, a Pleasanton resident who lives in the Mission Hills Park neighborhood, was among the residents displeased with how the event was set up because she was expecting more of a town hall where people from PG&E would present and then take questions from the audience.Â
“The set up is bad, very bad … all of these people are trying to have their voices heard and they’re not,” Hallett said.
Phyllis Couper, a resident of the Happy Valley neighborhood, said she has experienced up to three to five outages a month and was also hoping to speak with some of the decision-makers for PG&E to express to them just how impactful these outages are to residents like her who, at one point, experienced an outage for up to four days.Â
She said that as a retired senior on a fixed income, she isn’t able to afford throwing away food in her fridge after every single outage.
“PG&E just doesn’t … understand the problems they’re causing to individuals,” she said. “They’re not big problems to many of these guys who manage the towers but they’re big problems to us.”
Couper also expected a different type of meeting format and was disappointed that employees kept answering the same questions throughout the night but couldn’t answer specific questions that she had regarding her bill.
“An event like this is not necessarily going to change their outage history. It’s not meant to do that,” Zigelman said. “It’s meant to explain the facts to them and be here, have a listening ear and show them that we do care, we are listening, we are taking this seriously and that we have a plan that is going to improve things.”
Pleasanton Mayor Jack Balch was one of the few elected officials, along with Councilmember Julie Testa, who were engaging with residents at the meeting.
Balch said he understands there is a high level of frustration coming from residents who constantly experience these power outages and that the point of Monday’s event was to hear from as many people as possible; however, he said that town halls can sometimes become unruly, which the city wanted to avoid for the session.
Balch also said he believes there has been improvement on PG&E’s part over the past year to address power outage concerns, it just hasn’t “yielded the results yet that people may be expecting”.
As an example, he referenced PG&E’s replacement of 3,700 feet of cable and the installment of an EPSS protection device as one of the projects they’ve done to address the ongoing issues. However, he acknowledged there are still more important projects in the pipeline.
Zigelman mentioned that the company is planning to break up the power grid into smaller chunks so that the safety settings only serve customers who are in those high-fire threat areas and leave others in the city who are not in those areas out of those outages.
“The goal here is to protect all of the customers who are most at risk from a wildfire perspective but remove everyone who is not and make sure their reliability is as good as it can be,” Zigelman said.
State Sen. Jerry McNerney, who represents parts of the Tri-Valley, also attended the event both as an elected official and as a Pleasanton resident who has experienced numerous power outages and wanted to voice his concerns as a PG&E customer.
One of the many points McNerney made during his comments was that the power company’s past deferred maintenance should have been addressed earlier in order to mitigate some of the infrastructure issues.
But even while being critical of the company, McNerney also said he’s aware that PG&E is working to invest in future projects to improve overall reliability.
“It’s in their interest to do that because they are very unpopular as a corporation and (it’s) not in their best interest to be that unpopular,” McNerney said.
I was there. While PG&E should be praised for having this get together, PG&E past & current performance is not adequate. They do not appear to have an executive whose career is on the line about our poor reliability. Even cherry picked data like the fact that 9 months of outages in 2025 is numerically lower than 12 months worth in 2024 doesn’t even suggest that the number (or durations or causes) in either year is acceptable. They do not appear to be adequately transparent about projects or committed to communicating precise & current project status (“~2026” for one the early phases does not give confidence about longer term project timing). Senior management does not appear to place enough priority on effective & timely measures to mitigate customer pain (explaining why we have to suffer is not the same). PG&E did not organize this meeting in an effective manner so that people could be mass informed, common questions/issues discussed & answered, and individual issues discussed. Pleasanton should consider buying & running the electricity delivery system as PG&E senior management doesn’t seem to care all that much. Take a look at Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Turlock, and Sacramento as examples of better run & lower cost electrical utilities.
I arrived at 5:10. I was informed that I was the first guest.
I exited the facility at 5:35.
It took a few minutes to understand that this meeting was a farce.
It was a “TELL THEM ANYTHING TO GET RID OF THEM MEETING.”
I walked around the circle they formed with their posters, reading them as I walked. Second time around, I stopped to ask questions.
I asked questions of ten different BART people to explain the high number of outages in northwest Pleasanton since the new Stoneridge/Dublin BART stations came online. Before coming online, there were near-zero outages. Each of them ignored my question; they went into their story with PG&E infrastructure upgrades, with enhanced safety settings designed to prevent wildfires.
According to CAL Fire’s official Fire Hazard Safety Zone Maps, northwest Pleasanton is not designated as a fire hazard area.
Residents deserve answers. They were not available at this gathering. If PG&E is applying wildfire protocols in areas that do not meet the criteria, it must be a broader infrastructure issue. Either way, transparency is not the game here.
There has been no investigation/transparency into whether trains and stations are straining the local grid. It is somewhat common knowledge that BART and Pleasanton have shared power sources at the Stoneridge side of the substation.
Bart pays PG&E $50 million annually to power their trains and stations. When the north west Pleasanton power goes down (most likely caused by deceleration and acceleration of trains entering and exiting the substations). PG&E crews come on scene, restore power, and move on. One PG&E official stated that a recent power outage was a bird strike. In northwest Pleasanton, a several-square-mile area, all utilities are underground. The official did not state the location of the underground bird strike.
Mayor Jack called in IOUs to get PG&E in the room, but it was PG&E’s rules that governed the meeting. I appreciate Mayor Jack’s arduous work to make this happen. I will continue to donate and support Mayor Jack’s campaigns.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, there was a senior lady who praised the PG&E event. Following that praise, she stated that she would voluntarily give up her senior discount on her water bill.
While I appreciate her generosity. It is important to recognize that her statement does not reflect the reality for thousands of seniors in Pleasanton. Many of whom live on fixed incomes, and even modest discounts make a meaningful difference in their ability to afford basic utilities.